The words "Internet" or "online" appear in almost every media headline relating to the recent spate of fraud perpetrated on local bank customers, and the recent abduction of a 12-year-old girl from Manchester by a 31-year-old man.

I recall when an acquaintance was relieved of her wallet in a shop in Eloff Street in the eighties. Her handbag, being carelessly carried and negligently left open, proved too tempting for a passing fleet-fingered delinquent.